Silver Eagles Sales Through May Best Since 1986, Turkish Silver Bullion Imports Surge

Silver Eagles Sales Through May Best Since 1986 and Turkish Silver Bullion Imports Surge

Gold and silver are lower today despite equities being mixed and Eurozone debt markets exhibiting signs of stress again with Portuguese and Greek bonds being sold with yields rising again despite the latest “bail out” speculation.

Silver demand internationally remains very high despite repeated, uninformed talk of silver being in a bubble. It is amazing how analysts who were never positive on silver, even when it was trading at $5/oz, are now experts and claim to know the future price movement of silver and know silver is a bubble.

Analysts who never commented on silver before in their life have suddenly come out of the woodwork to proclaim their wisdom about silver being a bubble. Their analysis is superficial at best and almost entirely based on silver’s recent price movement. The actual fundamentals of the market are completely ignored.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Absolutely nothing has changed regarding the fundamentals of the silver market. The physical silver bullion market is a tiny market vis-à-vis the gold market and the equity, bond, currency and other markets.

The recent sell off, far from being the bursting of a bubble was actually due to Wall Street banks with massive concentrated short positions being involved in a short squeeze that propelled prices higher, unprecedented and dubious margin increases and increasing investment and industrial demand for silver internationally.

Bloomberg reports this morning that Turkey imported 25.7 tons of silver in May, up from 61 kilograms in April, the Istanbul Gold Exchange said in a report on its website. This is a huge increase in demand and suggests that Middle Eastern demand for silver, which has not been noteworthy to date, may soon become an important catalysts for higher silver prices.

Silver demand is particularly strong in China and Asia and among a minority but increasingly vocal and influential band of silver advocates who believe that silver is a superior form of money and will help protect people from developing problems in the western and global financial and monetary system.

Bloomberg reports this morning that U.S. silver eagle coin sales through May 2011 are the best since 1986 (see news below). 18.9 million ounces have been sold so far in 2011.

While that may seem like a lot, to put that number in context, it is only worth some $661 million.

Ireland, a small country, may need an extra €50 billion to be made available under the EU/IMF programme to allow it to remain out of the markets for a longer period.

The average daily turnover on foreign exchange markets is in excess of US$4 trillion.

The US has monthly budget deficits of over $200 billion.

(Bloomberg)-- U.S. Mint Silver Eagle Coin Sales Through May Best Since 1986

The U.S. Mint sold 3.65 million ounces of American Eagle silver coins last month and had the best January through May sales since 1986 as prices for the metal almost doubled.

Sales of the coins climbed 30 percent from 2.819 million ounces in April, taking the total for the year so far to 18.9 million ounces, the mint’s website shows. That compares with 15.2 million in the first five months of last year and is the most ever, according to data going back to 1986. American Eagle gold coin sales fell 0.9 percent to 107,000 ounces last month.

Silver futures jumped as much as 90 percent to a 31-year high in New York between January and April and gold reached a record in May as concern about Europe’s debt crisis, faster inflation, a weakening dollar and unrest in northern Africa and the Middle East spurred demand for a protection of wealth.

Silver then plunged as much as 35 percent as CME Group Inc., the Comex owner, raised margin costs to curb price volatility.

While silver “is beginning to move from the fringes with a little bit more mainstream demand, we’re still far from everyone piling in,” said Mark O’Byrne, executive director of brokerage GoldCore Ltd. in Dublin. “Some are buying purely for the safe- haven demand and are worried about fiat currencies. “

“There’s trust in silver and gold.”

The mint, located in Washington, D.C., said last week that its San Francisco facility will start producing American Eagle silver coins to meet demand at “unprecedented high levels,” and the plant can produce as many as several hundred thousand coins a week. The mint typically produces bullion coins in West Point, while other coins are made in locations including Philadelphia and Denver.

Demand for physical metal helped silver rise in nine of the past 10 years and gold complete a decade of annual increases, the longest run of gains in at least nine decades in London. Investors in exchange-traded products have accumulated about $122 billion of precious metals, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Silver futures for July delivery traded at $38.17 an ounce on the Comex by 8:06 a.m. London time and are up 23 percent this year. Spot prices touched a record $49.79 in London on April 25.

Gold for August delivery was at $1,533.40 an ounce, after reaching $1,577.40 on May 2. It’s up 7.9 percent this year.

The mint sold 514,500 ounces of American Eagle gold coins so far this year. That compares with 521,500 ounces in the same period last year and 554,500 ounces in 2009.

For some people “it’s getting too expensive to buy an ounce of gold,” and they can buy silver more easily, O’Byrne said.

Hey a little respect for turkey. They have 75 percent of the worlds supply of boron and as soon as the psycho's running this show blow up about 4 nuke plants along the new madrid fault line we are going to need that boron to avert a tremendous ... Oh wait sorry we all die.

You need to pay a visit to the beautiful town of Boron California. From Wikipedia:

"A large borax deposit was discovered in 1925,and the mining town of Boron was established soon thereafter. This borax deposit is now the world's largest borax mine,[7] which is owned by Rio Tinto Minerals (formerly U.S. Borax). This is operated as an open-pit mine, which is the largest open-pit mine in California. This mine supplies nearly half of the world's supply of refined borates. Rio Tinto Minerals is Boron's primary employer, employing over 800 people."

Turkey is not a small country, within global 20 and 3rd biggest GDP growth ( 8% in 2011) in the world after China and India.

People have savings and want to invest.

Important point in this news is the human behaviour not the Country size.

Silver bullion was not comman and available in every dealer for investors in large quantities up until now, only alternative was gold( historically), people saw the last years silver jump from $20's to $49, everybody wants to share this enormous profit, there is a very strong demand to buy silver bullions from investors .

If it happens there, it will happen everywhere, in fact it is happening right now in US too, US mint production doubles at every 2-3 years.

When the debt hurricane hits, a few metals strapped to your ankles might keep you from getting blown away. Those purchasing "paper" metals for inflation protection, however, will someday stack their contracts and certificates alongside the FRN's in the wheelbarrow.

That turkish demand is about 750,000 ounces, not much in the overall demand. However going from 16 kilos to 25.7 tons is one hell of a parabolic demand curve. If even the turks are hedging their future bets with silver, why shouldn't the average joe stash a few ounces away?

It may only take $5 to take out of the ground but there are the funds in the foreign exchange markets that will be looking for a temporary new home very shortly. When the $4 TN a day being traded makes a rush for physical gold and physical silver, feel the transfer of some of the stolen wealth back to those people 'wacky' enough to have some physical silver.

my $5 post was just parroting some PM-'bubblists'. Nevertheless it seems to me that the market - which is no market - cares little about fundamentials / supply demand of the traded 'object' or paper or whatever, it just cares about maximising the absurdity of the compensation of the market's owners.

I'll go a step further on the SAE sales; I have not seen silver move like this since 1980. So whatever the paper clowns on the Street might say, the physical is flying. Some of the ancedotes are of $100K orders from W. Palm Beach being delivered by armored car on a somewhat regular basis down here to the uber wealthy. They know what is coming but play the game to keep the sheep calm.

I bough austrian phils on the pull back - cheaper. It will be intseresting to see what happens with eagles over the next 2 years. I believe they can only be minted from US mined silver - which is a limited supply of a commodity already in limited supply...crazy premiums coming soon??

as an aside, I have a growing fondness for turkey and the turks. The foods great, the chicks are hot, and they've thrown off that backwards muslim worldview. Good on them for getting their greasy hands on some silver too.

I beg to differ, if only because "they" encompasses a whole lot of people, many of whom are hard-line Islamists who have embraced, more than ever before, "that backwards muslim worldview" of a Caliphate, Sharia law, and tyrannical, religious despostism.

I've started a site that has some functionality in this area: www.truesilverprice.com. It's nascent at this point, but I'll be adding to it steadily as time permits.

There are a few realtime graphs that are interesting at this point:

1. "True Silver Price" - this is the average of prices of generic silver products scraped from websites of silver providers. There is a scraping/matching engine that allows me to easily add more products to scan. One goal is to get this to at least 100 vendors, which should be a reasonable sample.

2. "Premium" - shows the current premium above spot.

Even with the 15 or so products scanned right now it's useful. Another interesting graph shows volatility of Comex versus true silver price. You can clearly see Comex is a great deal more volatile than the actual price.

The site will eventually be a hub supplying information for "the common man" about silver ownership. It would be great if eventually people could stop watching the kitco graphs and watch these graphs (the kitco graphs may be great for traders, but they're horrible for the small investor). I'll be improving things until they are stable and rigorous enough that they're reliable.

Nice work & a good idea. It should be very easy for you to find 100 precious metal dealers online, however in my experience my local coin shops can always beat online retailers with lower premiums on generic silver. It would also be nice if there was a chart that show the historical relationship between COMEX price and real physical price... even if it only went back a year or two it would be possible to see when the divergence started to really take off.

Exactly. I pray for one more big dip so I can load up. Unfortunately, despite the now non-stop price manipulation, the price doesn't want to go below $36.

The pressure is building though as the developed world, dealing with double digit inflation (e.g. food inflation in China), is taking their meager wages and piling into silver. They don't make much, but when 30-40% of their income goes into savings (that is, silver), it puts a floor under the market.

KEEP BUYING THE PHYSICAL MATEYS, BRING FULL CANNONS TO BEAR ON THE COMEX AS WE COME ABOUT!

Let me know how you do when the propped up stock market blows up. They wouldn't be lending to banks at a quarter of one percent if everything was alright. Hope your family loves the taste of worthless paper cause no body will barter with you for that

Get ready to have your sorry ass handed to you. But keep churning out your JPMorgue backed invective (don't worry, I checked, the PayPal credit _will_ be deposited this week for your efforts, just keep those posts coming).

Ben Bernanke ignited inflation in the developing world, and now poor people will have their revenge by buying silver. It's poetic.

But keep throwing out your pathetic, information free rants. They're extremely entertaining for the rest of us (we need the comic relief).

The revolt of the people against the world kleptocracy has begun. The buying of silver as a means to protect against inflation, and just as importantly, "stick it to the man," will spread just as the protests have spread.

As soon as the US common man wakes up to inflation, you won't be able to find the physical.

"Bloomberg reports this morning that U.S. silver eagle coin sales through May 2011 are the best since 1986 (see news below). 18.9 million ounces have been sold so far in 2011.

While that may seem like a lot, to put that number in context, it is only worth some $661 million."

While 18.9 million ounces of U.S. silver eagle coins may not seem like a lot, to put that number in context- the Comex currently has less than 30 million ounces of silver available for future delivery to all its customers and the year is less than half over.